RecChat: WebTrac NextGen Release - 10/26/2020
Episode Summary
In this episode our host Zach Malloch is joined by Cullen Barber, Patrick Hayden, Bryan Gillilan, Brian Hatch and Bret Alarcon to discuss the transition from the Classic WebTrac UI to the Next Gen WebTrac UI. The group walks through the planning phase of the transition, how your department will be working with the Vermont Systems Implementation Team to ensure a smooth change-over to the Next Gen WebTrac UI, and answers questions related to features, layouts, and timelines related to the new UI.
Recording
Transcript
Zach Malloch 0:00
Good well, that must mean that we are live even though it's Monday. Welcome, everybody, RecChat. I am Zach Malloch manager, Vermont systems education department and I'm joined today with an incredibly illustrious panel. We've got Cullen Barber, Patrick Hayden, Bryan Gillilan, Brian hatch and Bret Alarcon helping us out today. Patrick Cullenand Bret are going to be helping us behind the scenes with some of the chat and your questions. And we didn't think it was enough to have one Brian today. So we have two of them, both from the product management side and from the implementation side. And we have a jam packed session today. Very, very popular topic Next Gen WebTrac. And there's a lot to cover here. We know everybody has a lot of questions for it. We have the q&a session down in the lower piece. So you can ask your questions there, you should be able to ask or see other questions other people have asked and promote them if you also have that question. But we will try to ask you to kind of keep some of the questions until at least after the first initial slide because we are trying to anticipate some of what you're going to ask and and address that. So without further ado, Brian, what the heck is Next Gen RecTrac WebTrac? WebTrac?
Bryan Gillilan 1:25
Yeah, good question. So we're gonna jump in and show you guys a little bit of WebTrac. Real quick, we've shared this in the past, but that'd be a good idea to give everyone a little refresher on where we're at today. So we will jump into WebTrac here. So WebTrac is essentially the new WebTrac UI or Next Gen WebTrac is basically a setting the groundwork for future WebTrac changes. But it's really a modernization of the user interface itself for customers. So it's a simpler, cleaner design with some more modern best practices that allow us to adhere to W CAG much more easily. And it also eliminates some of the customization that customers have needed in the past, and allows us to kind of better the entire product for all customers moving forward. So really basic changes that are part of the Next Gen UI, kind of a more system, configurable style sheet, some changes to basic kind of functions within the application. Some better kind of search results and the ability to kind of view things and specifically the way a customer wants to view them with a kind of snazzier look, more modern feel to the product itself. So that's kind of the basics of exactly what it is. But it entails a lot more than that. And it's really setting the building blocks for us to do some some pretty great things with WebTrac moving forward and 2021 and even q4 of 2020.
Zach Malloch 2:55
Step one of WebTrac improvements, which in and of itself is a fairly significant improvement.
Bryan Gillilan 3:00
Yes.
Zach Malloch 3:01
All right. Well, I think that this next question I have is maybe one of the most common ones that we've received anywhere. When can we expect the Next Gen release?
Bryan Gillilan 3:12
Yes. So Next Gen is is available for our early adopters in the 3.1.10.05 release, that early adopter program we're looking at to take place through the rest of October. And very likely the first half of November, if not a little bit longer than that, depending on how how things go. Once we get through that early adopter program, that's going to allow us to kind of isolate some of those best practices and maybe some, some stumbling blocks or some things that we can prepare a little better for, for the remainder of customers looking to go to the new UI. So really trying to create a smooth experience for every customer that wants to move to that UI, across the board. So that's the reason why it's available in oh, five for early adopters. And then we'll be kind of making it available for everyone else shortly thereafter, once we kind of learn some of those things and been able to document them and give them to customers up front.
Zach Malloch 4:05
So it sounds like we're suggesting a lot of preparation and planning go into this. So in that sort of vein, how much downtime would somebody expects you to need to have to get ready for this?
Bryan Gillilan 4:15
Yep. So so we can certainly talk. So from a transition plan perspective, downtime wise, it should be relatively quick cutover. So some customers will have exactly zero downtime as part of the transition. So it'll be kind of a matter of kind of flipping the switch on the day of the transition to the Next Gen UI. So for those customers, that kind of transition process is going to be really simple, but there's a lot of planning and preparation that goes into that ahead of time. So while the actual transition won't involve downtime, the planning part will involve a lot of engagement by the customers.
Zach Malloch 4:55
I think that leads right into the next piece which is basically and I'm going to combine these two, if you don't mind, but how will customizations be affected? And how will that affect this change affect the community who uses WebTrac?
Bryan Gillilan 5:08
Yep, so some customizations will absolutely be impacted by the new UI. So if customers have very, very heavily customized splash pages that rely on their custom style sheets that they currently have in place, or if they have very customized WebTrac layouts, there's potential there for some of those customizations to not function the way they did in the prior UI, or potentially not even be necessary in the new UI. Depending on what the nature of those customizations are. As far as Screen customizations, go kind of all of your your standard ability to include or exclude certain columns in your search results and things of that nature will be retained, which search filters you display on all your screens, all those types of customizations will be retained. But some of the kind of more advanced customizations with the web layouts and splash pages and things of that nature may need some review, and may need some modifications to continue to work in the Next Gen UI.
Zach Malloch 6:05
Alright, so then obviously, those changes would basically be the effect to the community is teaching them a slightly new way to interact with WebTrac and get to what they need to do.
Bryan Gillilan 6:15
Yes, and hopefully, if we've done our job, well, there won't need to be a lot of communication on that front, because the system will will be set up in an intuitive way for a user to follow and capture those changes, great,
Zach Malloch 6:28
and always an important consideration, especially in uncertain times. But how much would something like this cost.
Bryan Gillilan 6:34
So the new UI, there's no cost associated with the new UI itself. So if you're paying your annual maintenance, and you're getting your RecTrac, updates regularly, the new UI will be free of charge to you. Kind of a side note on that is we will be offering some kind of consultation services for customers that want to take advantage of that, that there will be some costs associated with so if you want our implementation services team to kind of do a review of your WebTrac implementation with you and then potentially help you out with some of the changes that are identified as part of that. There will be some costs associated with that. But as far as customers just looking to transition to the new UI, there's no direct costs associated with the transition.
Zach Malloch 7:16
Right. And I think in that line, Brian, I wanted to talk to a couple of birds. I've also seen the question come in a few times about the documentation, the steps that will be included with that and the process and when and how we'll make that available for people.
Bryan Gillilan 7:31
Yep. So right now, kind of what people are looking at right now, this is a really high level view of kind of our transition steps that we've outlined. As we go through our early adopters, we will be refining this high level review into a much more detailed transition planning guide for customers that they'll be able to follow to kind of execute their transition. And that will come along with some specific step by step instructions for things like how do I actually turn on the new UI and enable it? And our plan is certainly to make the that documentation available potentially through a Vermont systems connect, and also within our support portal in our knowledge base.
Zach Malloch 8:11
Okay. Well, and I think that there was intention, you had mentioned that this PowerPoint would be part of the follow up documents so that if people wanted to kind of have these steps to present to the rest of their team, they would they would be able to do that and have this is kind of the beginning of that whole process? Yeah. All right. Well, I think that at that point, we're kind of setting the stage here. And then we can jump into actually what the transaction transition is going to look like for people.
Bryan Gillilan 8:39
Yes. So where I'd like to start on that is just kind of talking about the high level transition steps that we've outlined that that most, if not all, customers are going to want to follow. So he's kind of consists of some core components. The first one, and probably the most important in the entire transition process, is the preparation and discovery. So this is where you'll be able to as a customer, kind of enable the Next Gen UI on an internal only facing URL. So you'll be able to kind of implement this with your production data, but only available to your internal staff, and be able to kind of start doing some preparation and some discovery for the transition. So this will let you kind of review your WebTrac splash page, review your any web layouts you might have, review any other customizations you might have done in the past, and see how those are functioning in the Next Gen UI and see where some changes might need to take place.
Zach Malloch 9:35
So basically the same way as RecTrac. Next Gen was introduced, we made it an optional thing that you could try out with certain people's logins or uncertain interfaces before giving it to everybody in your staff.
Bryan Gillilan 9:47
Yeah, so you will be able to create an interface that basically only you just only give your internal staff the ability to see that interface, or you only share that URL with your internal staff. So it's it's a way to see the Next Gen you without actually committing it to your public.
Zach Malloch 10:04
And just real quick, so, and I'll leave it to you to kind of decide how you balance this. But we had a question come up to maybe see some of WebTrac. So maybe if we have a Screen where we're just going to talk for a little bit, we could bring up maybe the activity search interface or facility search and then switch back and forth to the PowerPoint.
Bryan Gillilan 10:22
Sure we can. Alright, so yeah, so I guess is a good time as any to kind of talk about that. So let's see here. Let me jump back into WebTrac.
And bear with me just a second here. All right. Are we seeing WebTrac? Now?
Zach Malloch 10:56
Yes, we do.
Bryan Gillilan 10:58
Alright, so let me jump in here as a good example. So just some folks can see an example of Next Gen here, we'll kind of leave that activity search page up there. So as we talk, through the transition steps, the first step is really that initial discovery and kind of research phase. So what we'll do during or will you the goal is during that timeframe is to identify what changes you want to make as a customer, to ensure your community has the best possible experience during that transition. So this is something that Vermont systems can help you with. So you know, talking about our implementation services experts, they'll be able to kind of potentially do a review on your behalf if you want to kind of review your entire WebTrac implementation from start to finish. So review kind of incoming links from your municipal website, review how your web or your WebTrac menu is structured, review how your splash pages implemented, all these kinds of things that can help, you know, as we put together the whole picture of the UI itself, in the experience, the patron is kind of going through to get there and interact with it, you know, we can kind of do a review of your environment and make sure that all the best practices we've identified are being implemented, or make some suggestions for where you can have improvements that go beyond just the Next Gen UI but but extend to the implementation itself, I'm trying to use this as an opportunity to get the most out of your ecommerce solution for your community.
Zach Malloch 12:32
So that's potentially adopting functions and workflows that could currently be available that people aren't taking advantage of, and just using the Next Gen as the opportunity to reevaluate all of that,
Bryan Gillilan 12:43
correct. And I'll let Brian speak a little bit to how his team can kind of help out with that role.
Brian Hatch 12:50
So we always kind of do that naturally, with any customer we work with, whether they're a customer migrating customer onboarding, we always look at the process, we're always trying to reduce clicks, make it as smooth and as intuitive as possible with the tools that we have. So we're, the new UI is really just kind of expanding that and making it giving us new tools to actually implement and apply. So we can actually connect up review the site, like Bryan said, and look at it from the whole picture of not just the UI, but all the processes involved. And that could be a couple hour process, it could be an hour process, a lot of it's going to depend on the customer, how you use what you use WebTrac for.
Zach Malloch 13:37
Great.
Bryan Gillilan 13:39
Yeah, I think the goal, you know, you know, the important part to note, there's the goal with any any kind of consultation like that, from us going into this transition is that what our team will provide is kind of a detailed transition plan for you that's tailored to your implementation. So if there's specific changes we'd recommend for you, as a customer, we can kind of detail those out in a in a transition guide for you to follow or for you to have us, you know, assist you in implementing,
Brian Hatch 14:08
but always turns into, it's always more than the initial discussion, right as we'd like to change these three, five things. But it's the actual details, right? What does that change involve? I'm going to be trying to point you in the right direction as far as using bulk changes, using the tools to make that as quick and easy as a process as possible. So
Zach Malloch 14:30
excellent.
Bryan Gillilan 14:32
So once that initial discovery phase is done, the kind of next step in the transition is at that point, you have an idea of what the scope of the changes you're going to want to make are as part of the transition process. So you can kind of develop a plan and a timeline for how you want to implement those changes. And when you want to actually kind of do the flip the switch for your customers over to the new UI. Um, so that being said, the next step in the transition is really communication and talking about how do we communicate to our community that this change is going to happen and what it means to them. So some really high level notes there on that initial communication that we've started to identify as earlier is better. So if we know two to four weeks out, when we're going to be making that transition, kind of sending out that initial communication to our community, through a rec connect through social media through some third party marketing tool, sending out that initial communication to let your your community know what's going to be changing when they can expect it to change and kind of how that impacts them. So you know, kind of being upfront with your community that this doesn't mean a new login, it doesn't mean changes to how they access the site, it's not a new URL or anything like that is really key in those initial communications to kind of put the community's mind at ease with with the transition itself.
Zach Malloch 15:49
I guess kind of along that line with you know what to expect from the change, we had a question asking about whether or not the Next Gen UI is dynamic, and whether it will respond automatically if you're on a mobile device or not. And what that might look like if this is a good time to ask that question.
Bryan Gillilan 16:05
Yes, it is a good time to ask that question. And yes, it is. So one of the things with being able to get away from custom style sheets for every customer has enabled us to do is make a much more responsive, tailored solution for WebTrac. So as an example, here, we can actually jump into a mobile view of this page that I'm currently on Oops, did not mean to go landscape there. So we can jump into a mobile view of our search page. And you can see right here from the get go, the search page for WebTrac has been kind of overhauled, especially with a mobile environment in mind to be more usable for our patrons. So filters have been moved into an icon to interact with search results are much more friendly with the card style to be able to expand and see those search results, but still retain all the information and data that a customer might want to interact with within those search results. And this goes beyond just the activity search Screen. This is every Screen in the WebTrac interface has been kind of tailored to have a better mobile experience and is responsive in nature by design, across the board.
Zach Malloch 17:17
Great. Looks good.
Bryan Gillilan 17:19
All this over here to the side. So folks can see that as well. So so the communications obviously key, once that communications have been sent out, then it's really just a matter of the next step being executing the plan. So whatever we've identified for changes that want to be made as part of the transition, now it's time to kind of execute those changes. So some of those changes, you'll be able to make slowly over time and not have to all be done on the day, you want to do the transition. So things like if you want to make changes to images or brochure content, or you know, WebTrac layouts, some of those things can be done in advance to be applied on the day of so the kind of legwork can be done ahead of time. So the day of it's a really quick transition, some of those things that we identify will have to actually happen on the day of the transition. So so it's a matter of kind of defining that plan and executing on the plan itself. Once we have those things in place, a really important step in this transition process is kind of an internal review with all your internal stakeholders in your organization. So reviewing with your marketing team, where necessary reviewing with your web design team, if we've identified any changes that we think would make sense for your actual ecommerce, or your actual municipal website, diving into WebTrac, and how customers are actually accessing WebTrac, you know, now's the time to kind of review those, those changes with your marketing team to make sure that timing on those changes aligns with when you want to transition, and that Type of thing. That review time is also the time to highlight any significant changes that are going to impact your customers. So if you do opt to kind of take on a new workflow that you've never used in the past for a specific scenario, because it makes sense, now's the time to kind of highlight those document them. So you can include some of that content, and your next communication with your customers, which is kind of the next phase of the transition. So after that first initial communication, and we've executed some of our changes we've reviewed internally, now we're getting close to kind of transition day, we want to reach out to our customers and kind of double down on the information we provided them initially. But now's the time where we can also provide some additional context if it's necessary. So if some workflow has changed, we can provide some context on that workflow change and things of that nature. So customers aren't caught off guard by that when they they go to the new UI for the first time. And it's also a chance for you to if you want to include in some of that communication, some examples of what customers can expect to see, at this point, you will have WebTrac up and running in the new UI internally, to be able to take some screenshots, potentially of the actual interface for your customers to see as part of that communication that you send out.
Zach Malloch 20:14
Okay, now we're getting a lot of questions that are kind of asking to see various things, or various new features or improvements to the new UI. And I know that this, this session is really focused a little bit more towards the consideration and the preparation piece of it. One of the things we mentioned was that they'd be able to have a test interface. And that would be something that they would be able to get into before their customers can and that they would be able to poke around and check out those changes and the like, and maybe answering something along that line would would answer some of these questions. And I guess, side note, would you guys be willing to come back a little bit later in the year and potentially have a more of a walk through a highlight of the new features Type of a conversation on this?
Bryan Gillilan 21:00
Yeah, we certainly can do that. And certainly appreciate the desire to see more of the UI. And I think over time, we will naturally see more of the UI in the various kinds of RecChats and other documentation that gets put out. But we can certainly look to respond to any specific requests for specific screens or features as part of the follow up to make sure that we can provide that but in the interest of time for this RecChat. Let's Yeah, I'd like to focus more on the transition itself, as opposed to kind of jumping around in the UI. But yes, I think we can absolutely plan on coming on again, in the future to touch on some of those more highly sought after topics screens or, or workflows moving forward.
Zach Malloch 21:47
All right. So if we can ask the participants, we understand exactly how exciting all this sort of stuff is, we will be talking about how to convert your WebTrac to the Next Gen in a way that doesn't affect your patrons immediately, so that you can play around with it. And as Bryan said, we'll have some sessions focused on seeing some of the new features. But we're probably not going to get to those questions specifically right now, though, as he said, we'll try to respond to them.
Bryan Gillilan 22:15
That being said, kind of talk in the transition plan. So you know, once we've done our prep and discovery phase, done our communication, we're all set internally, kind of we're ready to go, really the only thing left to do is kind of execute. So part of that internal stakeholder review, that really should happen with all customers is kind of developing your transition day checklist. And what we mean by that is really, there's certain items that are going to have to happen on the day of the transition, potentially, just in RecTrac. But, but also potentially some kind of, you know, stuff that's going to have to happen with your municipal webpage as well, if there's changes that have been identified there that you want to make. So creating a transition day checklist is can be really key to ensuring you have a successful quick switch over to the new UI, um, you know, who's responsible for what and what were the things actually have to happen on transition day. As part of that transition day, again, it's also a good idea to communication is key with your community here. So if you're going to be making the transition, it's not a bad idea to send out a communication in the morning of as a reminder, and then a communication following the transition completion to let everyone know it's now available. So depending on your means and methods that you communicate with your community, those can be a good idea as well. And then kind of coming full circle. The last sort of step in this transition process, and it's, it's one that we try not to ever overlook on our side of things, is feedback. So obviously, the community is going to be seeing this in detail for the first time, just as some of you are seeing the new UI for the first time now. Collecting and responding to feedback is a huge part of the transition process. So if you have a venue where you can collect feedback from your patrons, that's excellent. But collecting and responding to that feedback is how we make the application better for every community across the country. So the more feedback you guys get, the better you can tailor your WebTrac implementation to your community. And the more feedback you guys get from your community, the better we can help tailor the WebTrac application as a whole to all communities across the country in the world. So you know, don't discount how much that feedback can mean to you and to the application itself. From that regard.
Zach Malloch 24:43
All right. Well, I guess we still have some questions coming in. Was there anything else you wanted to discuss regarding the transition or getting help from VSI or anything like that?
Bryan Gillilan 24:54
Those are really the the main talking points I wanted to cover today. Again, just talking In terms of documentation, and what and what customers can expect to receive, again, one of the things we're looking to put together as part of our early adopter program is a robust transition planning guide that has some of these detailed steps on how to enable the new UI, how to change certain configurations, what tools maybe are the best tools to do that within the RecTrac application, and really having a well rounded implementation planning guide or transition planning guide for customers to utilize. And then again, with our implementation consultants, they're at the ready to kind of help out with any of the more complex questions that you may have, or, or do some of the review that maybe you don't feel capable of doing in house with the resources at your disposal.
Zach Malloch 25:46
Great. And so I guess, kind of, to that question, the I guess the I would consider these sort of related. One is, if somebody was interested in being a part of the early adopter program, how would they go about doing that? And then the second one is whether or not we have a timeframe involved for getting the document out to talk about enabling that new UI and letting people kind of start diving in and start this evaluation process.
Bryan Gillilan 26:11
Yep. So I think, you know, currently, I think we have the kind of our targeted number of early adopters at this point that we're looking for over the next month, we've identified those through through other conversations that were part of kind of generating the feedback that kind of led to the WebTrac UI that you guys are seeing now. So those early adopters have been identified at this point, if you're really interested in going to the new UI ASAP, you know, we can see what we can do to to accommodate a couple more. But I think at this point, we're pretty well set on the early adopters. As far as documentation goes for the specifics of how to turn the new UI on, especially internally, and kind of what that means. That's something I anticipate the initial version of kind of going out here in the next two weeks. And then that, that documentation may kind of be a little bit living as we finish up the early adopter program. But as far as kind of letting customers get in and expose themselves to the new UI in their own internal environment, the specific documentation for the steps to do that will likely be included here much sooner than the end of the early adopter program.
Zach Malloch 27:24
So the pretty important question I think a lot of people have is whether or not the direct link formats will change. So if you have links and other parts of your website pointing to particular activities, particular facilities, will those need to be updated for the new UI to work,
Bryan Gillilan 27:40
they will not so and some of this depends on how you implement the new UI. But the goal would be that any customer implementing the new UI, nothing about the URL structure for links coming from outside of WebTrac will change. So your existing links that you have on your municipal website, any existing links you've shared through social media, etc, those should all continue to function. That being said, one of the nice advantages of the new UI is that all of our search results and item details pages now include kind of all the search filters as part of the URL. So for something like summer camp, if you had a specific section of summer camp, you wanted to share externally or share from your municipal site, you can actually share these URLs directly. So now as opposed to sharing a link that goes to maybe a search results page, customers will have the ability to share a link that goes directly to an item details page where a customer can actually add the item to their cart. So this is a little bit of a workflow change that we've enabled in the new UI to where you can kind of provide a little more context with your links for customers from outside of WebTrac.
Zach Malloch 28:55
So we've got two questions, another two that I think are kind of related to each other. The first is, as people are seeing all these new features, and maybe they have feedback or suggestions about it, who would be the best ones to direct that to. And then the second one, like kind of related to seeing new stuff, it's probably the most common thing coming up here. And it is a request to see something and that's kind of the calendar interface as people are talking about COVID giving them more reliance on the calendar and whether or not we could see that potentially,
Bryan Gillilan 29:26
we absolutely can. So the calendar itself, not a ton has changed. Obviously, the search criteria are all moved to the left as they were previously where the calendar changes are really going to shine are in mobile. So with the mobile interface, one of the nice things is when we go mobile and look at the calendar. Many of you are probably familiar in the past the calendar interface on mobile, you simply had a list of all the days in the month and you might have to scroll for a While to get to the current date or a date that had some availability, so the calendar interface on the new UI is actually a calendar with some representation of availability on your calendar itself. And when customers touch an individual day on the calendar that they have some interest in, they will get the full picture of the calendar for that entire day. So to be able to choose specifically what it is they're after. So for those customers using the enroll by date functionality for swim lane reservations, fitness center reservations, things of that nature, this can provide a much better kind of tailored mobile experience to find the specific time I want on this specific day, I want without having to do a lot of scrolling within the application on a mobile device. In addition to that, there are obviously some basic styling updates that have happened with the calendar itself. Some things that we noticed a lot of customers doing with customizations like removing the share icons on the calendar, removing the Expand collapse icon and making that kind of a native day expand collapse just by touching the day or clicking on the day itself. So creating some more intuitive interactions within the calendar itself and removing some of the functionality or features that had limited to no use by the majority of customers to make a cleaner look for all.
Zach Malloch 31:23
So that already brings us to the end of this session. And thank everybody for joining us, we'll stick around and we'll keep answering some questions. But if anybody does need to drop off, as always, we'll be recording this, we'll be posting it to the RecChat archives under the support portal. So if you do need to go don't worry about missing anything. We'll also be sending in response doc after that. So thank you for everybody that has to leave for your attendance and anybody that wants to stick around. We'll be here for a little bit longer. So I'm getting some questions about the ADA compliance. Brian, could you speak to that for a moment?
Bryan Gillilan 31:56
Yes, I can. So one of the kind of precedents of all the changes that we've made to the WebTrac user interface through this process was kind of a W CAG compliance first design principle. So if any design element we wanted to implement didn't meet a W CAG, to kind of, you know, guidelines, we kind of scrapped that design idea and pivoted to something that does meet those guidelines. So in terms of the application itself, you'll find that it is W CAG per that we are striving for W CAG 2.0 compliance everywhere. The places where we can't guarantee that currently within the application, or obviously, splash pages, WebTrac, layouts, things where we allow customers to utilize custom styles or custom HTML within the application that we don't control from an application standpoint. But in terms of the overall basic structure of the application, and kind of the screens and workflows that are part of that the application itself is W CAG RS kind of it's accessible is probably the best term to use. So we're striving to meet W CAG 2.0, guidelines everywhere we can. And then as we obviously look further into 2021, and some WebTrac workflow improvements, we'll be able to do even more in terms of making more intuitive workflows that kind of aren't necessarily W CAG. related but help drive the accessible and accessibility and kind of intuitive nature of the application itself.
Zach Malloch 33:36
Are you had touched briefly as you were talking about WebTrac layouts in the difficulty of custom HTML being maintained, and that will be w CAG. But just in general, could you speak a little bit towards WebTrac layouts and anticipated changes in like,
Bryan Gillilan 33:49
yes. So you know, WebTrac layouts is something we are very cognizant of going through this design phase. Being that the kind of content area, the application has grown across the board for most customers with the new UI, and WebTrac layouts presented a bit of a difficult situation for us because no two customers use them like that being said, Any WebTrac layout that's really just HTML content, giving instructions, that kind of thing on a page should be relatively safe. Unless your HTML in those web layouts is heavily leveraging your custom stylesheet that you're currently implementing with WebTrac. Those layouts should all continue to function as they always have with WebTrac. If your WebTrac layouts are doing things that are more kind of JavaScript based, where they're modifying how the application behaves, or modifying whether things are visible or not on the application based on certain settings, those types of WebTrac layouts may require a little more review to determine if their functionality is still a needed and be if it's still functional in the new UI. easily with the new UI, the HTML structure of the page has changed in some areas. So based on that some JavaScript layouts may need to be updated to account for those changes.
Zach Malloch 35:11
Great. So now we got a few other questions coming in. And maybe this is one for you, Brian hatch, we'll, so Joanne is asking if we'll be offered a training for staff to become acquainted with the new interface.
Brian Hatch 35:27
Will we offer is the question?
Zach Malloch 35:29
Yeah,
Brian Hatch 35:29
yep. So I think that kind of circles back to the consultation piece. So again, it's really going to be different per customer, right? Because some customers might just do the consultation. And with our recommendations, and whatever changes we end up finding from that review, they might do on their own, whereas other customers actually might take it a step further and, okay, here's the changes that we think makes sense. And we might continue to do the work with the customer, you know, kind of extending that potential training period. So I think that kind of goes hand in hand with with that part of this.
Zach Malloch 36:08
And I anticipate that some of the documentation that we are going to be providing, and I know this question has come up a few times, but we will be providing documentation to show people how to enable that how to enable it in a test environment, and how to expose your staff to it before your customers so people get a chance to get used to it as well. And that suggestion, I'm sure he's going to be part of that documentation. Absolutely. To answer another question. So a lot of people do have those questions about how the Next Gen interface is going to look how it's going to operate. And we will have another session about this coming up. But very good point Tina made that. If you go back to the RecTrac archives, on August 6, we have the kind of introduction video with Patrick and Brian talking through some of those features. So if you can't wait until the future, go ahead and check out that archive direct chat from august sixth of this year. And that will help you get through and get your eyes on some of those big new changes. Quick question, whether there would be a difference between the steps a hosted customer needs to take versus an on premise customer needs to take. And if you want to just say that that's going to be covered in the document, I think that that's a that's a valid response.
Bryan Gillilan 37:26
And it definitely will be covered in the document. And there may be some slight differences in in how those in what steps those are. But really, it's probably just a matter of that discovery review phase, making sure that any, any changes that would require any work on our hosted services side are noted and that we communicate with that our hosted services team to make sure that, that they're aware of those changes, and that timing of those changes syncs up with what they're capable of doing. So I wouldn't anticipate there being a lot of that, but there certainly is some potential for for that to take place.
Zach Malloch 38:04
Okay. That pretty much clears the board aside from quick functionality question, if you're would like to answer that. Sure. So Gary's asking if there are day and our week options for the calendar view, I'm guessing to kind of narrow it down. So you're not scrolling through an entire month at a time to try to find what you're looking for?
Bryan Gillilan 38:24
That's a good question. And one that's come up quite a bit There currently are not. But those are the kinds of changes that kind of the the initial WebTrac UI modifications that we've made to date, set the foundation for. So one of the things we'll be looking at through the end of q4, and 2020. And probably throughout 2021 and beyond are areas in the WebTrac UI where we can make some potential workflow changes or options for a patron that make the system a little more intuitive to use. So that is certainly one that has come up that we have on our radar is, is some means of kind of weekly view or daily view for the calendar itself, to change kind of how that view is structured for a patron on on their end. So certainly something that is kind of on our radar, not something that's part of this initial WebTrac UI modernization.
Zach Malloch 39:20
Okay, and this has actually come up a couple of times as well as part of the auditing and the the improvement process. People are seeing the photos on the example of the activity search and noting that maybe they're not using them right now or asking if they are using some of them. Or if they want to start using these, what would the resolution or size requirements be? Are those anything you have at the top of your head? Or
Bryan Gillilan 39:43
it's actually a good question! And the answer to that is in the new UI is that all of these photos are resized by the application itself. So kind of the goal with photos is to obviously have them be web optimized To the best of your marketing team's capability or your capability. And really what we mean there is, you know, really large file size photos that take a long time for the browser to load can impact performance for customers. But that being said, the application is designed to resize these photos. So whether they're displayed in the search results, or displayed in the item details, they are kind of resized accordingly based on the context of where they're displayed. And I guess sort of a side note on that is that the aspect ratio of the photos is retained. So rather than kind of stretch your photo, or truncate your photo, if it's not the resolution, that or the aspect ratio that this actually fits in, we actually crop the photos, crop the photo to fit that aspect ratio, and the Next Gen UI. So you won't see stretched photos or expanded photos. And the size of this group won't change based on the size of a photo, the system kind of handles all that dynamically.
Zach Malloch 41:07
Right? Do you know what that aspect ratio is? If people want to just start preparing so that they don't have to worry about images cropping?
Bryan Gillilan 41:14
I don't know that off the top of my head, but we can definitely include that in the response document.
Zach Malloch 41:19
Excellent. And so we're getting questions are coming in a bit slower now. But so a question to kind of reiterate when the Next Gen WebTrac will take effect. And the obviously, there's some variety to that answer. But I guess maybe we could also add this is there going to be a point where it becomes a mandatory change to adopt the new UI,
Bryan Gillilan 41:40
there will be at some point. So as we look to improve kind of workflows across the board and WebTrac, and improve the overall customer experience, the vast majority of those efforts will be done with the new UI and the new UI only in mind. So the goal is certainly as we Progress to migrate all customers over to the new UI, because that's where all of the enhancements to workflows and processes are going to take place. And that's partially due to the fact that with the custom nature of the classic UI, and and the individual things any customer could have done with their style sheet, we can't necessarily implement that's the Type of changes we want to implement in workflows, and have those take hold in the classic UI as well. So there will be a point in time in the future where Next Gen UI will be a requirement and the classic UI will get deprecated. I don't have an exact date on that yet, it won't be in the next three or six months, if that puts some customers minds at ease. But beyond that, we will kind of be doing some investigation with our existing customers and finding out what barriers customers may have to migration to the Next Gen UI to try to eliminate those so so migrating to the Next Gen UI for WebTrac becomes something that's simple and easy for every customer to do.
Zach Malloch 42:59
Great. So Keith is asking on the topic of the pictures again, if the image cropping goes from the bottom first or the top first, he's noting that there's the participants head is kind of cut off in the Maple Street example you've got there. I think that my suggestion would probably be try to get pictures that are the proper aspect ratio and check the response doc to see what that's going to be and then you won't need to worry about cropping. But is there logic that you can expose on that one? Brian?
Bryan Gillilan 43:28
I, again, I don't know the answer to that right off the top of my head. But that's certainly something we can include in the response doc with that aspect ratio is, is what directions the images are cropped from by default.
Zach Malloch 43:41
Okay. And will golf be affected by this? I guess you could expand that question Are there any modules that won't be affected by the UI changed.
Bryan Gillilan 43:50
So there is not a single module that is, is unaffected by the UI change. So you'll see the shift to the sidebar search filters as across the board. In every module, we can kind of jump into tee time example here for tee time reservations. So again, pretty straightforward in terms of, you know, no real huge changes here other than for customers that have multiple courses, the ability to expand and collapse a course. And obviously, the search filters have moved moved to the sidebar, which again, the nice improvement with moving search filters to the sidebar and moving search filters to an icon in the mobile environment is that customers get to see more quickly the results that they're actually after, rather than having to scroll through a bunch of filters. And especially with the mobile environment, it really puts what the customer is looking for at the forefront as opposed to trying to enforce some search filters on them at the forefront. And we can talk about you know as you get into the transition process, that's something implementation services teams will will definitely look to to discuss with you is how you're driving customers to your search screens in WebTrac. And whether or not there's some more contextual ways to do that within your application to help your patrons find what they're looking for faster.
Zach Malloch 45:11
And then we had a question from Joanna, they might need you to clarify this if we don't get it exactly. But her question is, will there be changes to RecTrac 3.1? Once WebTrac is live? And I guess I'm kind of interpreting that as far as Will they need to have adopted the Next Gen UI in RecTrac to adopt the Next Gen UI in WebTrac? Or how future changes will be? Will they be kind of like one and then the other? Or will they kind of be integrated together?
Bryan Gillilan 45:41
That's a very good question. The answer initially is no, you will not have to adopt the Next Gen UI and RecTrac to adopt in WebTrac. That being said, We'd certainly recommend it from a functional standpoint. And the RecTrac classic UI will certainly be deprecated. Before the WebTrac classic UI will. So that date is going to arrive much faster than the WebTrac UI deprecation date. Well. That being said, as far as as their changes in RecTrac, that come along with the changes to WebTrac. The answer to that is really no at this point. So once you implement the Next Gen UI, and for WebTrac, it's not going to change the way any of your functions or features work in the RecTrac interface. So that will remain the same.
Zach Malloch 46:29
Yeah, so you can roll them out independently. So Anita and Christie have two questions that are once again, kind of related to each other. So Anita is wondering, what would it take to have the Next Gen up and running by January 1? And then Christy's question is, when would we be willing to start quoting and scheduling for transition consultation?
Bryan Gillilan 46:51
Those are good questions. So right now, you know, kind of working through these initial early adopters, we're looking to kind of have our consultation reviews done for those in the coming kind of two weeks, three weeks timeframe. And their implementations kind of done. post that in the in kind of a one month timeframe. Once we've done those initial reviews with the initial early adopters, I think at that point, we'll have learned what we anticipate learning through the review process and will potentially be able to open up scheduling for some of those consultations for non early adopters. Soon thereafter, I don't want to speak to that too heavily. That's probably Brian's domain a little more than it is mine in terms of the timing on that. But there's obviously some availability that we have to discuss around the holidays and stuff like that when it comes to scheduling. So Brian, you want to add anything to that on your end?
Brian Hatch 47:43
Yeah, I guess if we're working around any Type of deadline, right, if if the first of the years a goal for somebody, I guess we just want to talk a little bit more details about it and see if we could get something on the books and rather than later, but it's something we just need to plan around and check the resources in mind.
Zach Malloch 48:00
And I imagine that the documentation will have kind of an internal checklist to say, are you ready for the consultation call? And then once that's released, once people go through that initial phase, then they'll be able to contact us and let us know kind of what sort of timeframe they're ideally looking at and how much help they're looking to have?
Bryan Gillilan 48:19
Yeah, I would say, you know, pre that checklist, I would say kind of for those on this call, the precursor to probably even having that initial review scheduling conversation is ensuring that you are up to date with 3.1.10.10.05 or later, being kind of a precursor to that initial call, because we'll likely want to start to do some of the review for the WebTrac, layouts and things of that nature, we'll need to be able to kind of get in there and enable the modern UI on a on a sample interface to know for sure that no changes need to be made or what changes need to be made. Okay.
Zach Malloch 48:53
Well, we have one more question hanging out. And it's about a particular feature or potentially an enhancement. So I think we'll probably just leave that where it is for right now. And we can come back to stuff and I know that good ideas and suggestions will definitely be a big part of what comes in after people start playing around with this. But I think that that's a good time to start wrapping things up right now. So I'll ask you the review. If you have any closing thoughts or statements,
Bryan Gillilan 49:20
no immediate ones. I know there was a question maybe we didn't answer regarding who to contact if you have, you know, thoughts on functionality or features or improvements. Those can certainly come directly my way and my contact info will be shared in the follow up document that comes out for this. So if you have any ideas or pain points that your community is currently struggling with, that you'd like to see addressed in WebTrac Moving forward, don't hesitate to share those thoughts and ideas directly with our product team here at Vermont systems. All right,
Zach Malloch 49:53
and like always, we will try to have the recording of this session up by the end of the day tomorrow and the response doc because it has a little bit More detail in it is definitely something that will need a little bit of more time to to get ready and to consolidate into add. But once it is ready, it will go into that same spot in the RecChat archives. I guess there is one more question maybe we can answer. Are we planning on making this UI available in our Demo site? If people wanted to check out Vermontsystems.com and find somewhere to play around with it?
Bryan Gillilan 50:26
Yes. And I would anticipate that being up and live by the end of next week on our Demo site on Vermontsystems.com.
Zach Malloch 50:35
Okay, and maybe we'll end with just one more quick iteration of what the the anticipated timeline is. So we have currently early adopters that have just received this update. They're starting to be worked with, and we're anticipating that to be about two weeks.
Bryan Gillilan 50:53
Yeah, I think we're trying to plan for the end of that, or at least kind of the culmination of us learning what we're going to learn through that early adopter phase to be mid to late November. So we're looking kind of two to three weeks from now in terms of that early adopter phase. And then kind of moving on past that early adopter phase and implementing what we've learned from it with with everyone else.
Zach Malloch 51:18
So probably end of November, early December would when we have documents if people wanted to start undertaking this themselves.
Bryan Gillilan 51:25
Yeah, and some of the prep documents will likely be available prior to the end of November. So enabling the UI internally, for your own staff is potentially something we can send some more tailored documentation out on, ahead of time for those customers that want to kind of get started on this review, prior to,
Zach Malloch 51:45
okay, and then once people are pretty comfortable with it, we were suggesting around two weeks or so of communication time with their customers, let them know changes coming. And then that will allow them to release.
Bryan Gillilan 51:57
Yeah, and that will very much depend on the amount of work involved in the transition for an individual customer. But once we've done the initial discovery and review work, typically you'll have a good idea of what it's going to take to get to the point where you're ready to flip that switch. And I think once you know that date, and you can commit to that date, better off to communicate early with your community, rather than wait to the last minute. So yeah, I would say initial communication two weeks prior is probably that's our recommendation at this point is a minimum of two weeks prior for your initial communication and then communicate often if needed, from there on out. So day of immediately following that kind of thing.
Zach Malloch 52:37
Okay. Well, that's That's it for today, then I think we have a lot of questions here. We have recorded every question that was asked in the QA in the chat. And we will be consolidating those replying to them creating a document, which includes the spreadsheet, or the PowerPoint that Brian started with, which has a couple of examples of the items that you'll be looking for with timelines, that's going to have answers to many of the questions that were asked today. And we will be sharing more information as we have it and as we consolidate everything, so thank you to both Brian's thank you to Cullen and Bret and Patrick for hanging out in the back end and answering a lot of the questions as they came in and making my job easier. And I think that's going to be it for this special Monday edition of RecChat anybody that's going to be at RPA or in RPA. Please do feel free to say hi to the Vermont systems virtual booth. And we'll be talking to you guys next week for virtual symposium and the week after that for another chat.
Cullen Barber 53:38
Thanks, everybody.
Zach Malloch 53:39
Yeah, thanks, everybody. And I'll give Bret the go ahead whenever you're ready to take us out.
Bryan Gillilan 53:46
Thank you